Sport-utility vehicles, minivans, and crossover vehicle designs often include auxiliary or third-row seats which may be adjustable from a seating position for accommodating passengers, to a folded or stowed position to provide cargo space.
Current third-row vehicle seat designs often include a seat base having a base frame that shifts between a raised position and a lowered position, and a seatback attached to the seat base which may be folded forward, such that the vehicle seat may be quickly collapsed into a stowed position when additional cargo space is desired. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,012,755 and 8,585,147 disclose two such stowable seat designs.
It is also known to integrate a motor into the seat-folding assembly to provide power to facilitate or assist in folding or stowing the seat and/or returning the seat to its passenger use position. However, there are several drawbacks to the existing powered folding seat designs.
First, the motors in existing designs are typically mounted on the seatback. Though this location may provide advantages in operably connecting the motor to the seatback and seat base, there may not be adequate space in some seatback frames to accommodate the motor and drive train necessary to provide a power assist to raise and stow the seat.
Second, the addition of a motor and its interconnecting parts to the seatback frame may provide additional limitations to seatback styling and comfort, since the size of the foam portion of the seatback may need to be reduced to provide space for the motor and the hard plastic shields utilized to cover the motor assembly within the seatback frame.
Third, additional shielding of the back portion of the seatback may be required to protect the motor assembly from damage from cargo when the seat is in the stowed position.
Fourth, depending on the particular seat design, placement of a drive motor in the seatback may add mass to the moving seatback. In these circumstances, it may then be necessary to re-design the seatback structure to compensate for this additional mass to provide adequate strength to withstand inertial forces in the event of an undesired vehicle impact.
Also, the motors utilized in existing powered folding seats are often both relatively large and loud (to provide the necessary torque to fold/raise the seat quickly), or relatively small and quieter, but slower in operation.